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Lavazza, the historic Italian coffee company, has offered to buy the French brand Carte Noire for an estimated $880 million. Leading European news agencies believe that the deal could see Lavazza take a commanding market-leading position in France as a result and, crucially, see their revenue in the country treble.

The formal contracts haven’t been signed, yet, but this is a significant advancement in a saga that for months showed no signs of drawing to a conclusion.

In a statement, Lavazza announced that they had tabled a binding offer for Carte Noire’s business within the thirty one nations that comprise the European Economic Area, subject to official approval from the French authorities and the European Commission.

Costing Sh72 million, the brand new Kavutiri milling site in Embu County, Kenya, is hoping to become a focal point for the local coffee community.

Officially opened by Governor Martin Wambora last week, the processing facility has a working capacity of 2.8 tonnes per hour and could potentially employ around 200 people – if the estimated 110,000 farmers within travelling distance come and use the plant.

The Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) has been running their Cup of Excellence program since it was first launched in Brazil in 1999. Since that maiden event, the Cup of Excellence (COE) has grown to include – at one point – eleven different coffee producing nations and countless farmers.

At the moment there are twelve different COE events covering ten countries.

For those in the trade who are on the hunt for the best coffee in the world, it’s a much-loved event and for those farmers and plantation workers it is a vital part of the calendar – a good score from the COE judges can increase the value of their handiwork increase exponentially.

Starbucks may be one of the world’s most famous – not to mention popular – coffee chains. But not even the Seattle-based giant has penetrated all four corners of the map just yet. They might have a substantial presence in North America, Europe and East Asia, and they might have stores in South America, the Middle East and Australia, but there is one place that they haven’t conquered: Sub-Saharan Africa.

All that could change though, as the company has announced they are going to be opening their first store in South Africa next year.

Hoarding stock in the hope of a price increase is risky business, but it’s a gamble that more and more Vietnamese coffee farmers are taking.

A report suggests that coffee growers in Vietnam, one of the world’s leading producers of robusta, believe that the value of coffee will pick up and as a result their coffee reserves are the largest they’ve been in five years.

The coffee farming industry in Brazil is huge. Roughly a third of the world’s coffee supply comes from this great and vast South American country and sizeable portions of the country is given over to the bean, with the majority of those farms and plantations found in the south-east regions.

Yet despite being one of Brazil’s most populous regions, the state of Rio de Janeiro falls well behind its neighbours of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo and Espirito Santo in the coffee growing stakes.

Coffee producers in Hawaii have been fighting the Coffee Berry Borer for some time now but according to reports in the American press they are going to get a helping hand from Washington.

The U.S Department of Agriculture has announced that fund totalling $1m were to be released, with the money being split between the island state and farmers in Puerto Rico, who are also suffering from insect infestation. This pot of cash will help bankroll research initiatives and eradication programmes.

The coffee culture of South Korea is a sprawling rainbow of opportunity that has an abundance of pop-up cafes and themed outlets. Take the one coffee shop in South Gyeongsang Province, for example. In Ullabong you can get your latte topped off with a foul-mouthed insult emblazoned in foam. The capital city, Seoul, features similarly weird and wonderful premises such as the coffee shop that houses two sheep and the one that doubles up as a sort of legal consolation areas.

It has been revealed that the Ethiopian government is planning to restructure the nation’s coffee industry by creating a standalone entity to oversee all aspects of the sector.

With two separate departments already casting an eye on the native coffee industry, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has started to collate feedback on a draft proposal that would see the return of a single body to oversee coffee development in Ethiopia.

Just a handful of days removed from J.M. Smucker’s announcement that they would be dropping the price of a cup of coffee, Starbucks has made their move. Unfortunately, despite seeing the cost of a coffee from the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts fall, Starbucks have moved in the opposite direction and hiked up their prices.

As of writing, the drinks that will be impacted by this directive aren’t know, but it is believed that, for the first time in two years, the majority of beverages will see their prices go upwards.